The personal data ecosystem is broken

The Internet is a fundamentally decentralized system that links billions of interconnected devices to improve communication, access to information, and economic possibilities for billions of people across the globe. Yet despite its distributed nature, giant technology companies have cleverly used the underlying technical protocols to build layers of proprietary applications that capture and control massive amounts of personal data. In today’s economy, data equals money.

The top five companies (Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft and Amazon) boast a combined market value of almost $3.5 trillion. That’s greater than the 2017 GDP of any single country in the world except for the US, China, Japan, and nearly equivalent to the GDP of number 4 Germany.

Not to mention that hundreds of millions of citizens’ personal information has been compromised over the last few years. The recent Equifax security breach is just one of many incidents that underline the problem with individual’s personal data. Under the current system, individuals have absolutely no control over how Equifax, and other data brokers, collect, protect, and use their personal data.

Although governmental bodies and consumer rights organizations, especially in the European Union, are trying to maintain an appropriate balance of transparency, use, and access when it comes to personal data, they are fighting an uphill battle.

This broken data ecosystem misallocates data’s value away from its rightful owner — the individual — and prevents society from effectively tackling many of its biggest challenges.

Time has come for citizens to regain control over their data, and to start actively participating in the value generated by their data.

Empowering individuals to profit from their data

We propose a new market-based approach that leverages the latest developments in blockchain, cryptography and market design to level the playing field between data consumers (companies, organizations) and data owners (essentially, individuals).

Wibson is a blockchain-based, decentralized data marketplace that provides the infrastructure for individuals to securely and anonymously sell private information that is validated for accuracy. Wibson is built up on a set of core principles: transparency, anonymity, fairness, censorship resistant, and the individual’s ultimate control over the use of their personal information.

In the Wibson marketplace, citizens, for the first time, will be able to participate in an efficiently functioning, decentralized data marketplace that provides both financial incentives and control over their personal information, all without sacrificing privacy.

This is just the beginning. Stay tuned for more information about Wibson and how decentralized data marketplaces will completely transform the ways in which citizen data is collected, used, and transacted in the future.